


black carbon and stardust

by purplefennels7



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cloak of Levitation (Marvel), Eventual Fluff, Insomnia, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony Stark Needs a Hug, give the Cloak a character tag you cowards, i think, like seriously chapter 2? all fluff, wong needs a vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2019-08-08 18:05:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16434230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/purplefennels7
Summary: Reversing Thanos's snap apparently did absolutely nothing for Tony's mental health. He still has no idea how he ended up at the Sanctum at 2:30 in the morning, but Stephen's awake too, for related reasons. Having him there helps.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i fell hard into the ironstrange hole and i'm still falling. y'all get this because of it. someone please give wong a vacation the poor man puts up with so much bullshit.

Tony snaps his fingers, and the world goes black. When the darkness clears from his vision, there’s some kind of Oriental-looking arch rising from the black water in front of him. He doesn’t spare a thought for that, though, because Stephen's standing at the edge of the water, silhouetted by the setting sun with his back turned and the Cloak of Levitation draped around his shoulders, looking just like he had had when he’d stepped out of that portal in Central Park so many months ago. Tony gets an odd urge to run to him, bury his face in his chest just to know that he is solid, he is corporeal and at least for these few moments he can forget how it felt watching him turn to dust. Stephen turns slowly, as if sensing Tony's eyes on him, and fixes him with an unreadable look.

“Did you do it?” he asks, even though his question is answered by the mere fact that they're standing together in this odd ethereal place. Tony nods anyway.

“Yeah. Thanos is dead, I cut the bastard's head off myself. Half the world is about to be alive again.” He closes his eyes, mind flickering back to the Earth he's left behind. “But of course, in the meantime, everything else has gone to shit and all of them might end up dead anyway because of it.”

“But they’ll be alive, and you will have done the universe the greatest favour that one man can give. No one demanded this of you, Tony, not after all you’ve lost.” Tony’s first instinct is to say _after you’d given up the Stone for me, all I got was the moral responsibility to fix it_ , but as soon as the swell of bitterness rises it’s gone again. Sometime over the past couple of months he’s come to terms with the fact that Stephen made the choice that he thought was right, and that Tony shouldn’t be blaming him for it. He’s probably blaming himself enough. Instead he quips, “Earnestness? From Doctor Stephen Strange? Never thought I’d see the day.” But Strange’s eyes don’t light to face the challenge Tony’s extending, and he’s looking at him like he’s never seen him before in his life.

“Uh, and also, Wong says hi,” Tony backtracks. This isn’t how he wanted this to go. “Apparently the Sanctum is awfully quiet without you and the Cloak causing trouble. He’s looking forward to seeing you, if you’d believe it. I am too.” It was true, too — the Sanctum’s librarian had been an invaluable asset to Tony and his team as they’d worked to figure out how to reverse the snap. Even if that just meant catering food at Shuri’s request, grumbling all the while about how ‘the mystic arts were created to defend the planet, not deliver unreasonable amounts of carbs to six people who don’t particularly need more health problems.’ But despite his complaints, the portal-delivered food, along with useful books and the occasional magical relic, had kept coming, and Tony isn’t about to admit that every time the orange sparks appeared he’d wanted to see Stephen, not Wong, on the other side, and every time he’d had to remind himself that Stephen was dead, _dead,_ had sacrificed himself so they’d even have the chance to be doing this.

But again, Stephen looks almost pained at his words, and even for the brief time that he’s known him, Tony’s started to pick up on the little differences in the stone-faced facade he always seems to have on. By the bitter end he’d almost figured out how to tell sarcasm from annoyance, though it was a little pointless because the man never stopped snarking.

Now, though, it looks like Stephen’s falling apart and not even trying to hide it, and it reminds Tony a little too much of the look on his face just before he’d faded into dust.

“Tell—” He breaks off, turns away to face the sunset. “Tell Wong I said sorry.” If Tony looks closer, he can see Stephen's shoulders shaking.

“You can tell him yourself,” Tony says, but the terrible sinking feeling in his chest tells him that there is something very, very wrong. “Wait a second, sorry for what?”

“Tony,” Stephen says. “I'm not coming back.” The bottom falls out of Tony's chest as he stares at Stephen’s turned back, his figure suddenly looking much too small against the dark image of the arch behind him.

“What do you mean you're not coming back?” he says numbly. “Thanos killed you, and now we've reversed it. You're coming back. You're going to be alive again.” Stephen still isn't looking at him.

“The soul stone. It requires a sacrifice. You got the Stone before it returned to its place of origin, and since I...gave myself for this future it counted that as the sacrifice. It’s a bargain. A soul for a soul.” Tony is reeling, the assumption that Stephen would be _back,_ would be _alive_ if they succeeded shattering before him.

“And you knew this?” he asks, his brain latching onto the closest thought, the betrayal that had shot through him when Stephen’s words sank in. “When you made your choice? You knew you wouldn’t come back and you let me struggle through these hellish weeks thinking that you’d be back at the end of all of it snarking at me to call the Cloak by its proper name just like you’ve always had? That was — that was my fucking hope, you asshole, I don’t care that it was ‘the only way.’ There could’ve been another one.”

“One life traded for billions,” Stephen says, but his eyes are fixed unwaveringly on the ground as if he's trying to avoid Tony's accusing gaze. “It was but a fair trade.”

“Fair trade my ass!” Tony shouts, but before he can get another word out Stephen is disappearing. For a moment Tony thinks he’s disintegrating like he had had on Titan, and in a cruel mockery of that terrible day he leaps forward as if to catch him, before he realizes that he’s just simply fading away into nothing, into blackness.

“Stephen!” Tony whirls around, hoping that the wizard will appear behind him, but he’s confronted by the blackness melting into the sunset and the temple and the ground beneath his feet and before he knows it it’s drawn itself across his eyes, dark and heavy and pressing in on him like a too-tight embrace. Suddenly he can’t seem to draw a proper breath and there’s silvery streaks of light spattered across his vision but when he closes his eyes they don’t disappear and all at once the ground is falling out from under his feet and—

Tony jerks awake in his chair, hand hovering centimeters away from the trigger on his nanotech, breath coming in pants. He’s fallen asleep in front of his workbench again, the hologram that he’d been working on still rotating serenely before him and casting blue shadows onto his shaking hands. He should’ve known better than to have thought the nightmares would leave him alone for long.

In the weeks and months after the snap he’d had them almost every time he closed his eyes; Peter and Strange and the Guardians fading away over and over, Pepper and May Parker and everyone he’d left behind dying in increasingly gruesome ways, and night after night he’d jerked awake with a name on his lips until he’d just stopped sleeping because he couldn’t bear to see it all over again. Instead he’d holed up in the lab, surviving on coffee and ibuprofen and the occasional bite of bread, tinkering with his suit and with Peter’s — because he was coming _back_ , dammit, they were going to bring them back — and with the assembly he and Shuri were working on in place of the Gauntlet to put the power of the Stones together again. Sometime around the fifth day FRIDAY had tried to shut down the power to the lab in an effort to chase him out, and even though he’d known he was consigning himself to an eventual earful, he’d muted her, blocked lab access to everyone without his credentials, and kept right on with it. Sure, the room occasionally tilted around him and there were more bright sparkles in the corners of his vision than he’d normally prefer and things that weren’t really there showed up every now and then, but he had an unlimited supply of caffeine and painkillers and he wasn’t drinking like he knows he would’ve been years ago and as long as he kept working everything would be alright.

It didn’t matter that somewhere around the seventy-two hour mark the sparkles had gone very briefly orange, and even though it’d been irrational, he’d thought for a moment that Stephen had somehow survived, had been pulled into a different dimension and would come stepping into the lab with barely a hair out of place. It didn’t matter that he’d seen an illusion whose face had phased between Peter’s and Stephen’s, standing right out of arm’s reach for several hours, repeating over and over _you didn’t save me, you didn’t save me_ until Tony had snapped and vaporized a rather impressive chunk of the wall only to find the phantom unharmed and laughing. It didn’t matter that the image of Stephen suspended in Ebony Maw’s ship occasionally superimposed itself over his blueprints, and sometimes Tony could almost hear his screams. And it certainly didn’t matter that he kept wishing that he could’ve had Stephen in his arms at least _once_ , with neither of them dying or in pain. If he could figure this out, he would be able to bring him and everyone else back, and everything would be _all right._

Until Wong opened a portal into the middle of the lab, around the time Tony had started to lose track of the days, and unceremoniously pulled the plug on the whole thing. Tony had dropped the tool he was holding, inspiring some rather creative, though exhaustion-slurred, cursing, and reflexively loosed a repulsor beam at the librarian’s head. Wong, for his part, had barely flinched as he neatly transformed the nanoparticles into, of all things, Silly String before levelling Tony with an unimpressed look.

“Stark,” he’d said, impervious to the poisonous looks Tony had been sending him. He really was ridiculously unflappable in the worst of times. “Bed. You’re no use working yourself to death. Honestly, you’d think a world-class genius would have better sense.” In retrospect, it’d probably been a bad sign that Tony hadn’t had the energy to come up with a proper comeback. Instead he’d turned away from Wong to switch the power back on, only for him to phase himself through a portal directly in front of his face.

“Stark, if it’s the nightmares that are keeping you up, I can do something about that. No need for your whole hero-complex act, it’s pretty obvious that you are not, in fact, fine.” Just to save some face, Tony had put up some weak protest that he doesn’t even remember the details of, but soon enough he’d conceded, especially when he’d managed to flip the power switch only for his blueprints to start miraculously duplicating themselves before his eyes. He had to admit that whatever Wong’s weird orange circles had done, it had worked. Even though it had brought back a memory that he wasn’t sure whether he’d dreamt up, of Stephen passing cold fingers over his forehead and whispering _sleep, Tony, I’ll be back when you’re awake_. He’d passed that one off as him going mad.

In any case, he’d slept for an entire 24 hours and had even been able to come up with a coherent, though reluctant, apology to his team and a rather sniffy FRIDAY when he’d finally woken up. Rhodey and Bruce had extracted the promise that he’d start having an at least semi-normal sleep schedule, because there was no point in having a team if one of them only communicated in signs drawn in coffee beans — Tony still swears that he wasn’t ever that bad. Those inexplicable moments of missing Stephen so much it hurt still popped up every now and then, but he always pushed those away, ignoring the fact that he didn’t have a clue if Stephen had been even remotely into him and that he was probably being a certified idiot, and telling himself that he’d work everything out as soon as the wizard returned to the realm of the living. And with Wong’s help and FRIDAY pointedly reminding him of the time every fifteen minutes as soon as it passed midnight, he’d actually been doing okay for a while.

Until they’d finally managed to reverse the snap. Until he’d driven a spike of alloy-reinforced nanotech right through Thanos’s neck. Until Peter and the Guardians and everyone else had reappeared. Until Stephen and the Cloak and the empty Eye of Agamotto had rematerialized directly in front of him. Until everything was meant to be okay _was_ okay, and Tony still wasn’t. Because everything was okay and that meant that everything that he’d been occupying himself with, everything that he’d been distracting himself with, was gone, and watching his friends rematerialize had only made the memories of watching them disappear that much worse.

And now here he is, the nightmares as bad as ever. He can almost feel that blackness pressing down onto him, and all of a sudden he can’t bear to stay in his own tower for another moment, looking around at the bare walls and trying to remember how to be alright. He jumps up and keys the elevator for the ground floor, not even bothering to power down the lab.

“Uh, Boss, where are you...going?” FRIDAY asks as the doors slide open and Tony goes striding across the lobby, fingers tapping anxiously at the housing of the arc reactor.

“Out,” Tony quips, pressing his palm against the blue light and letting his suit envelop him. “I’ve just gotta get out of here for a bit, baby girl, I’ll be back.” And then he’s rising above the Manhattan streets, taking a moment to glance over the glimmer of the skyline before setting a course for the first place he thinks of: New York’s Sanctum Sanctorum.

“Boss, I’ve got to tell you, it’s 2:40 in the morning,” FRIDAY says in his ear as soon as the command goes through. “You sure it’s the right time to go confess your undying love for our wizardly friend, or whatever it is that you’re doing?”

“Sorry, what?” Tony sputters. “I am _not_ in ‘undying love’ with him, and even if I was, that isn’t why I’m going.” He leaves out the part where he doesn’t know why he’s going, either. Sure he and Stephen had hung out some after the universe had been restored, but that had been mostly time spent snarking at each other, poorly disguised as ‘Avengers business’ and also known as a reason for Tony to see him and remind himself that he was alright. Okay, so maybe he had a bit of a crush. Not the point, at all. He is a responsible adult and more importantly, he’s Tony fucking Stark and he doesn’t do crushes. And he definitely doesn’t show up at his crushes’ houses at two in the morning because he’s had a nightmare that prominently featured them. Nope.

Alright, so he’s lying to himself. That doesn’t mean FRIDAY has to do the thing where she somehow pulls off a raised eyebrow without a face to do it with, but she obviously hasn’t been informed of that.

“If you say so,” she says, but remains silent for the rest of the flight and lets Tony stew in the realization that he is in fact acting like a teenager, albeit one that gets to go out and make questionable decisions in the middle of the night. He lands in front of the steps of the Sanctum and takes them two at a time, suit retracting into its housing as he raps at the door with the attached knocker. _Guess wizards don’t do doorbells_ , he thinks as he waits for it to open.

He’s about to knock again, hoping that FRIDAY isn’t right and neither wizard is awake, when the door creaks open and he’s met with an inquisitive-looking Cloak of Levitation. It seems to perk up when it sees Tony, much to his befuddlement, and beckons with a corner as it floats off down the main hallway.

“Uh, where are you taking me?” Tony asks, feeling slightly foolish for talking to a piece of sentient fabric. The Cloak pauses, then gestures to first itself and then up the staircase. “To Stephen?” Its collar twitches. “Um, is Wong awake?” A shake, and a rather insistent flap in the same direction as before. He contemplates apologizing and making a hasty retreat, but the Cloak rather literally takes that decision out of his hands by shaking itself in what looks suspiciously like a huff before winding around his wrist and pulling him towards the stairs, keeping a tight hold as if it’s afraid that Tony’s going to run away.

 _Tony Stark, master of good decisions and self-control_ , he thinks, and then follows until they end up in front of a nondescript room on the second floor. The door is open a crack, allowing him a view of a sliver of moonlight and the edge of a bookcase and not very much else. The Cloak takes it upon itself to push the door open, and Tony nearly recoils in surprise. Instead of Stephen working or meditating or whatever he does when the insomnia gets especially bad, he finds him sitting up in bed with a vaguely shellshocked look on his face, shaking slightly like he’s holding back tears.

“Go away, Wong,” he says, voice scratchy. “I’m fine. You’ve got night watch, not nanny duty.” Tony doesn’t move, and after a beat Stephen looks up again, and goes still when he registers that Tony is not, in fact, Wong.

“Stark?” he asks, looking small and afraid and everything Stephen Strange shouldn’t be. Tony nods, takes a step forward—and finds himself with an armful of trembling wizard, Stephen burying his face into his shoulder. His arms come up to wrap around him, and even as he’s wondering what’s brought on this sudden whatever-it-is, he can’t help but notice that Stephen does fit very nicely into his arms and he really doesn’t want to let go.

So he doesn’t. He stays standing half in the doorway to Stephen’s room, tracing comforting circles into the sorcerer’s back and letting him cling to him like he’s drowning. Only once does he ask himself why Stephen’s letting him see him break, when he’s spent so much time trying to show everyone else that he’s the epitome of suave confidence even after dying and coming back to life multiple times. He pushes that thought away, though, because no matter the reason, Stephen needs him, and he’s determined not to fuck it up.

Eventually, when Tony’s legs start falling asleep and Stephen shows no sign of moving anytime soon, the Cloak swoops in from where it’s been hovering behind him and helps him half-carry Stephen to the bed. Stephen looks up when he’s moved, and the Cloak brushes across his cheek as it helps Tony get him sitting mostly on his own. Tony offers it an appreciative nod as it swoops off, trailing along Stephen’s arm before it presumably resumes guard over the Sanctum. Tony sits down beside Stephen and, after a moment of deliberation, puts an arm around him.

“Is this okay?” he asks, but he would’ve known, even if Stephen hadn’t nodded, by the way he leans a little bit into the touch and some of the tension seems to drain out of him. He seems content to just sit in silence, and Tony doesn’t mind, instead taking the time to look, really look, at the man sitting next to him. He appears somehow older than he had had on that morning in Central Park, stepping through a portal to send Tony’s life reeling yet again, as if every reality he’d witnessed had aged him just that little bit more. In spite of, and just maybe _because_ of, that, Tony isn’t ashamed to admit that Stephen is, actually, ridiculously attractive and goddamnit, he isn’t here to make moves on the man, he’s here to—

“Why are you here, Stark?” Stephen's question comes at the same time that Tony's thought process stutters to a halt. He can’t exactly say _I had a bad dream and apparently more of an unacknowledged crush on you than I thought._

“Tony,” he says instead, looking around at the austere space of Stephen’s bedroom to avoid his eyes. “Call me Tony.”

“Tony,” Stephen repeats, and his name does sound very good on Stephen’s tongue, especially when neither of them is dying. Tony doesn’t think he’s imagining the hint of a smirk that pulls at his mouth. “Tony, what are you doing here?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he replies, and thinking back to the state he’d found Stephen in, tacks on “Nightmares” to the end of his sentence. Stephen just looks at him, as if to ask _and why did that bring you to the Sanctum?_ Tony considers making up some outlandish story and maybe flirting a little, just for the hell of it, because his brain seems extremely set on reminding him about his stupid crush at the most inopportune of times. But when he takes another look at Stephen and the dark circles under his eyes and the way he’s still leaning into Tony’s half-embrace like he doesn’t want to let him go, and recalls watching him fade away and the feeling of the darkness that replaced him, and decides that he has to tell the truth. Maybe, at the very least, it’ll let Stephen know that he isn’t alone in whatever terrors he’d been dealing with, and if he’s lucky, it might get him to actually talk about it. Because he wants to help, really wants to, and that realization surprises him just a little bit.

“It was you,” he blurts out before his derailing train of thought can stop him. “In my dream, I mean. You were the sacrifice. The Soul Stone took you and you never came back.” Stephen looks at him sideways, but stays silent, and by the time Tony nears the end of his rambling story he’s migrated about six inches closer and is holding his free hand in both of his trembling ones.

“That’s why I’m here,” he finishes finally, and even though he hadn’t even _had_ a reason at the beginning, this one feels right. “‘Cause I wanted to make sure you were alright, because I—” He glances down at their stacked hands and wonders whether he should say his next thought. Stephen looks at him, follows his gaze, and suddenly moves to pull his hands away. Tony shakes his head— _Stay_ —and damn the consequences, keeps talking. “The world needs you, Stephen, and I need you. I need you to snark back at me and tell me I’m being an idiot because very frequently I’m being an idiot.” _And maybe one of these days when both of us are feeling at least mildly okay I’ll get up the courage to ask you out, because I should not be as terrified of losing you as I am and I want to have you before something even shittier than this happens._ Stephen looks at him, and then down at their hands again, and when he replies he does not say anything that Tony would’ve expected.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Tony says, and it comes out a little sharper than he’d intended. “I’m alive. You’re alive. What else is left to be sorry about?”

“I saw 14 million realities with the Stone on Titan,” Stephen says instead of answering his question. “14 million, and you were the key to every single one. We didn’t win one, like I said. We won 38. And in 34 out of those 38 you were the one that killed him. When you died, we lost. Inevitably. But I said one because that one was the only one where the toll wasn’t higher. I watched myself die and I watched you die and the kid die and every single person that possibly could die over and over and over again and I wasn’t going to let that be the price of winning. But—” Tony has a half-formed protest on the tip of his tongue because _minimal toll my ass, you died and Peter died and half the universe died and part of what was left of my mental stability died_ , but he’s forestalled by the look in Stephen’s eyes as he seems to steel himself for his next words. “But I am sorry that it had to be that way. I’m sorry that I had to leave you without any of that to go on. I’m sorry that I couldn’t have helped you or at least been there for you or anything. I’m sorry that you had to go through all of this because really it all comes back to me, giving up the Stone for the universe to live. And for _you_ to live.”

Tony thinks that he should be furious. Should be tearing into Stephen for the suffering he’d gone through because of his choice, for the deaths that he’d pretty much engineered. For, yes, leaving him alone with nothing but more demons. But he’s not. He can’t find it in himself to be angry anymore, because when it all comes down to it, Stephen saved the world and he shouldn’t be feeling obligated to apologize for it. He can tell that he’s already starting to hide that little bit of weakness, that little glimpse of the cracks in his soul, behind what Tony can very clearly see is the same facade that he’s spent too many years putting up over his own suffering.

“It’s alright,” he says, and he means it. Stephen looks taken aback, his questionable progress towards not looking like he’s been hit by an emotional brick stopping in its tracks.

“What do you mean it’s alright?” he asks. “It’s my fault that you were left to save the world pretty much on your own with no time to pause and grieve. It’s my fault that you’re having these nightmares.”

“Stephen,” Tony says, shifting his arm so he can hold the sorcerer at an arm’s length. “Stop. Stop beating yourself up about it. I know what it feels like to think that everything is your fault, that the whole thing would’ve turned out better if you hadn’t stuck your foot in the works. Honestly, I’m still blaming myself for that whole thing with ULTRON and the Accords and all the shit that came along with that.” He doesn’t mention that some of his nightmares still involve a shield coming down towards his face, and freezing to death on a cold steppe in Siberia. He doesn’t think Stephen needs to know about that, and hopefully he never will. He doesn’t need more of Tony’s shit on top of his own.

Instead he takes Stephen’s hands in his, holding them still against the trembling. “But the thing is, you did what you had to do. You chose the way you thought was best, and look at what’s come of it. We’re alive. You’re back from whatever soul purgatory you got trapped in. The universe is still here. So think about that, when things get especially shitty. You’re alive, and you know what, you saved the fuckin’ world along with it. That’s enough.” A beat of silence passes, in which Tony briefly contemplates asking Stephen about whatever had been keeping him up, before the edges of a real, genuine smile tug at Stephen’s mouth. Tony grins back at him, and decides not to ask. He doesn’t seem particularly inclined to tell, and anyway Tony suspects that the reasons are approximately aligned with his own. He tells himself that he’ll ask Stephen sometime.

“Thank you,” Stephen says quietly.

“Glad to help out your magical ass again,” Tony replies, his ingrained urge to snark winning out over his self-control. He’s expended enough of the self-awareness that Rhodey’s spent months trying to force him into.

“Douchebag,” Stephen says, with an entirely fake glare and something dangerously close to mirth sparking in his eyes, and it’s so nice to see that spark return that Tony almost forgets to retort.

“Takes one to know one,” he shoots back as soon as he collects himself. Stephen rolls his eyes, but before their conversation can dissolve into a sass-contest, Tony says, “No, but really, I’m glad I could help. And thank _you_ , for not kicking me out when I showed up at your house at 2:30 in the morning because if someone did that to me and I was by some miracle actually sleeping, I totally would’ve told them to fuck off and come back never. I don’t know, I just...talking to you helped. A lot. So thanks for that, too, I guess.” _Very eloquent, Stark. Good going._ But Stephen smiles again, and _damn_ he’s pretty when he does that, and pulls his hands out of Tony’s grasp. Tony misses the warmth almost immediately.

“I can help with the nightmares, if you want.” And even though he’d had Wong do almost exactly the same thing just when it’d been getting bad, for some reason the idea of going back to Stark Tower and sleeping, even without the threat of the dreams, just isn’t something he really wants to do.

And then he gets a possibly ruinous idea. Brilliant, if it works, but still generally ill-advised, because karma hates him. Instead of answering Stephen’s question, he reaches for his hand again, and if he lays on the puppy-dog eyes a little thick, no one has to know about it.

“Can I stay?” he asks. He regrets it almost before the last word has left his mouth, because Stephen is looking at him like he’s gone mad. _Fuck_ , he’s screwed it up. And just when it seemed like it was going to be alright. “Look, no, never mind, forget I said anything—”

“Tony,” Stephen says, and he freezes. “You just surprised me. Of course you can stay.” And they really are awfully close together and it’s like watching from far away, in slow motion, as Stephen’s eyes drop to Tony’s lips and—

“Okay,” Tony says, dropping his chin to his chest and looking away, acting fascinated with the pattern on Stephen’s duvet. If he’d looked, he would’ve seen Stephen lean back slightly, something like disappointment flitting over his face. Apparently his brain took the time to regress back to its sixteen-year-old state while he was busy making bad decisions.

“I should go and find, uh, something to sleep in.” He hastily changes the topic, but inside he’s cringing hard enough that he reckons he’s shoved himself into the astral plane. Great job, Tony, you made it worse.

“No need,” Stephen replies, and is that fondness on his face? With a wave of his hand and some sparkles that Tony’s convinced are more for show than anything, he’s in a set of brown pajamas, and Tony decides to follow his example of completely disregarding his apparent cognitive failures.

“Brown? Really?” he can’t help but say. “Brown’s your colour, Dumbledore. It’s enough that you’re showing off your fancy sparkles, but couldn’t you have given me something more on-brand? Red, maybe?”

“That’s your brand,” Stephen retorts. “It’s my favour, which means it’s my choice,” and oh, _no_ , Tony’s just the littlest bit turned on by the idea of wearing Stephen’s colours instead, showing off that he’s _his_ and no one else’s, and this is a bad train of thought to be having, well, anytime, but especially right now.

“Whatever. I’m wearing them, and therefore my opinion matters.” Even worse comeback. He is really not doing well tonight, and of course it’s to the one person whose opinion he actually cares about.

Instead of letting Stephen dignify that with a response, he gets up, kicks off his shoes, and goes around the bed to curl himself up under the covers. A moment later he feels more than hears Stephen huff out an exasperated little breath as he settles against him. Apparently Tony’s a little more tired than he thought, because he’s snuggling against him and closing his eyes before his brain has even caught up enough to tell him that he’s making a questionable decision. It isn’t even that questionable, he thinks, heart leaping traitorously, as Stephen doesn’t move away and even puts an arm around him.

“Goodnight, Tony,” he says, and Tony has just enough time to think about how he wants to lie next to Stephen and hear his quiet voice in his ear, every night, before sleep takes him away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been like eight months and rly i don't have an excuse but it's FINALLY DONE here you go the fluff you requested enjoy :D

When Tony wakes up, the bed is cold and empty next to him, and he panics just a little bit because  _ did Stephen run away from his own house because he realized that he’d spilled all his middle of the night emotions onto Tony, _ before he notices that the Cloak is hanging in the middle of the room and, if he isn’t mistaken, managing to look sideways at him despite not having eyes to do it with.

“Hello again,” he says, sitting up and running his hands through his hair. “Where’s Stephen?” It points vaguely downwards with a twitch of the collar, and trails after him as he climbs out of bed and pads down the stairs barefoot. He finds Stephen in the Sanctum’s kitchen, eating some kind of soup with a book hovering atop a golden mandala in front of him and a cup of tea next to his elbow. There’s a cup of coffee — god bless this man — and an egg on the opposite side of the table, and a box of muffins on the countertop. Stephen looks up when Tony steps into the room and favours him with a smile.

“Morning,” he says. “There’s food, if you want it, but don’t touch the muffins unless Wong says you can. And there’s coffee, because I know all about your addiction. Apparently you tried to get Wong to make your coffee cup refill automatically?” Tony remembers that incident. He also remembers swearing Wong to silence.

“That traitor,” he says, sitting down across from Stephen and picking up the cup. “He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that.”

“Sorcerers tell other sorcerers things. That’s how we keep this reality at least somewhat safe,” Stephen says, and then he honest-to-god winks. “And how gossip can spread from Kamar-Taj to New York to Hong Kong in approximately three seconds.” Tony laughs, and suddenly he’s struck by the unexpected want for his life to be like this. He wants to wake up every morning with Stephen at his side and absentmindedly banter with him over breakfast and try to convert him to drinking coffee and generally get to be all domestic with him because Tony’s always been weak for domesticity. He wants to bother everyone living in Stark Tower and the Sanctum and take Stephen places when they aren’t on saving-the-world duty and throw things at Wong when he bothers them and see Stephen bond with Peter and have everything else that he’d dreamt about when he wasn’t sure how he could possibly go on. In those darkest moments, he’d think about how at the end of all of it Stephen would be alive again and at least they’d have a chance, and now he’s here and they’re alive and there’s nothing left in his way except his own self-doubt, and he’s not about to let  _ that _ stop him. He’s Tony Stark, and he saved the universe. He can do  _ anything. _

He sets down his mug, pushes his chair back, and gets up to go around the table. Every questionable choice he’s made in the last twelve hours has turned out quite alright, and he’s hoping this one does too.

“Tony, what—” Stephen says before Tony grabs his forearms and pulls him to his feet, trying his best not to jostle Stephen’s sensitive hands. Tony catches a glimpse of Stephen’s surprised face, but unless his eyes are entirely deceiving him there’s  _ want _ in that look too, pure and unadulterated, and that gives him the confidence to lean up on his toes — god this man is tall — to cup his cheek with one hand and press their lips together. Stephen sighs into the kiss, sliding one arm around Tony’s waist and the other against the back of his neck and pulling him into his arms. Tony goes willingly, pressing himself up against Stephen and laughing a little when he hears Stephen’s book thump against the table. Stephen retaliates by nipping lightly at his lip and smirking when Tony shivers. 

Stephen’s starting to lick into Tony’s mouth when Tony pulls away, leaning back to look him in the eye, feeling again stupidly apprehensive. Saving the world was never this hard, was it?

“Stephen, are you sure—” Stephen cuts him off with another kiss, sliding his hand into Tony’s hair to pull him impossibly closer. He tastes like tea and peppermint and Tony wants nothing more than to stay here forever, because he doesn’t think anything can get better than this. They only break apart when someone clears a throat behind them. 

“Good morning,” Wong says dryly from the doorway. “Stark, good to see you’ve stopped pining; Stephen, I told you he liked you. I have an appointment to make at Kamar-Taj, but Stephen, I expect details later. Don’t be late.” Before either of them can do more than open their mouths, Wong has grabbed a pair of muffins from the box on the counter, magicked a cup of tea into existence, and disappeared through a portal. Tony thinks he sees him wink at the Cloak as the sparks spin closed behind him.

Stephen’s arm is still around Tony’s waist as he turns to face him again, a stupid smile on his face.

“Sounds like you had a little crush there, hmm?” he says, and is rewarded by Stephen muttering, “Shut up, Tony, what’s this I hear about pining?” before kissing him again, and Tony doesn’t think he’ll ever get sick of kissing Stephen Strange. Stephen’s smiling just as stupidly when he lets go again, and with a flick of his hand Tony’s chair appears next to his. Tony laughs and kisses his cheek, sitting down and putting his head on Stephen’s shoulder.

“Showoff,” he mumbles through his mouthful. 

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. Also, don’t pretend you don’t enjoy it,” Stephen replies, dropping Tony’s coffee cup through a portal before levitating his book back to eye level.

“I mean, if it gets me free coffee, I’m not complaining,” Tony says with a boyish grin, and just to mess with him a bit more, Stephen duplicates the cup and the coffee in it. Tony laughs and pushes the cup towards him, expecting him to push it back, because as far as he knows Stephen only drinks that tea that he steals from Nepal every time he’s there. What he doesn’t expect is for him to pick it up and drink from it.

“Hold on,” he says, lifting his head from Stephen’s shoulder so he can give him and the cup in his hand a look of consternation. “Since when do you drink coffee? I thought you only stuck to your weird magic tea.” 

“For the last time, Tony, the tea isn’t magic. It’s just tea,” Stephen replies, rolling his eyes. Tony remembers the very first time they’d met when Stephen had offered him tea and he’d called it ‘weird magic tea’ and refused to drink it. “Anyway, I don’t know how I would’ve made it through med school without more of the stuff than even you drink, and I only picked up the tea around when I moved into Kamar-Taj.” The  _ after the accident _ goes unsaid, but Tony assumes it anyway. “Reading while astral projecting isn’t exactly the same as actually sleeping, but I had to make it through as much of that library as I could. Also, why would I have a coffeemaker if I didn’t drink it? Wong definitely doesn’t.”

“You have a coffeemaker?” Tony says, at the same time that he notices the offending object sitting on the counter across from him. “Never mind.”

“You’d know that if you were around more.” Tony really, really hopes that means Stephen  _ wants _ him to be around more. He contemplates asking, but god knows he’s already been needy enough, what with showing up at an ungodly hour and all, and he doesn’t want to seem even worse. So instead he just winks and tucks himself back into Stephen’s side. There’s still a part of his brain that’s telling him to just  _ ask _ , that if Stephen hasn’t kicked him out already then he probably isn’t going to now, but he pokes at it until it shuts up. Stephen is warm against him, and for the first time in a while the voices telling him to do more, be more because he isn’t enough have gone silent, and he really is content to just sit here and watch Stephen read by the dim light from the window and not think about the world on his shoulders.

After a little bit of silence Stephen starts half-summarizing, half-translating the book he’s reading as Tony alternates between telling him that half the stuff he’s saying is impossible and trying to apply physics in ways he doesn’t think physics was ever designed to be applied in order to explain them. A few times Tony tries to prod the conversation towards more of the glimpse of Stephen’s beginnings as a sorcerer that he’d gotten earlier; he doesn’t seem particularly inclined to talk about it, however. 

As they talk, Tony is reminded of why he’s really awfully attracted to Stephen. Besides the fact that he can snark right back at him, and that he’s way hotter than anyone who spends half of his time cooped up in a library has the right to be, and that he pulls off the salt-and-pepper hair better than anyone Tony’s ever met, he’s  _ competent _ . This is a man who knows what he’s talking about, and Tony’s always liked people who know what they’re talking about. Even though Tony’s still firmly of the opinion that whatever those orange circles are doing, there should be a scientific explanation for it that doesn’t involve infinite dimensions and the power of Agamotto. 

Eventually, once Tony’s downed another cup of coffee and Stephen’s cup of tea has gone cold — of course, he reheats it as soon as he notices, but not soon enough to prevent Tony from teasing him about not actually liking the stuff, which he steadfastly denies — and Tony’s learned three swear words in Sanskrit and eked out three more by combining bits of other words, Stephen magicks away their dishes and drags himself out of his chair, dislodging Tony from where he’s leaning against him and using his hands to draw a rough diagram in the air.

“As much as I want to stay and keep telling you how wrong you are about everything concerning the mystic arts—”

“Hey! Everything’s gotta be proven by science in the end, Merlin, even your weird hand-wavey stuff. It’s just gotta get  _ discovered _ by someone first, and that someone is  _ me _ .”

“I have to be in the second half of the meeting that Wong is in right now,” Stephen continues as if he hasn’t been interrupted. “And I’m pretty sure that he wants to gossip about something or the other, he really is a nosy old lady sometimes.” He offers Tony a hand and pulls him first to his feet then into a kiss that’s over much too soon for Tony’s liking. “I’ll see you, though…”

“Tonight?” Tony says quickly, abandoning his chase after Stephen’s mouth. “I mean, if you can.” Stephen grins. 

“Tonight, then. Your place or mine?” he asks.

“Here, come over, I’ll introduce you to the bots. Bring the Cloak, too, if it wants to come. I have a feeling it’ll hit it off with at least one of them.” 

“It’s a date.” The aforementioned relic, which had been hovering unobtrusively in the corner of the room, flies over to drape itself over Stephen’s shoulders as he puts his hand at the small of Tony’s back and guides him towards the door.

“Not a date,” Tony replies. “Trust me, I’ll take you on a proper one soon, wine and dine you like you’ve never been before.”

“Coffee date?” Stephen asks, waving his hand to turn Tony’s pajamas back into regular clothes. Tony thinks he’ll have other uses for that spell, namely getting his clothes  _ off _ , but for once in his life he feels like taking this slow. Relatively. 

“I mean, there’ll be coffee, definitely, but it’s not—”

“Coffee date it is, then.” Tony lets out a defeated huff as he looks up to find Stephen wearing a triumphant look, and okay, how can he complain when he gets to say that he’s taking this man on a date? He doesn’t even care that it isn’t a typical Tony Stark first date, because this isn’t exactly a typical Tony Stark relationship either. He’ll have plenty enough time to take Stephen wherever he wants in the future, the future that they can actually have.

Having not been paying attention, Tony yelps as he feels himself enveloped in soft red cloth, the Cloak’s collar tilting towards him as if in consideration. A quick glance confirms that it’s wrapped itself around both himself and Stephen.

“Congratulations,” Stephen says dryly, looking over at him. “Looks like you’ve passed muster.” 

“I’m glad,” Tony says, spinning around in the Cloak’s embrace and leaning up to steal another kiss. 

“You want a portal back to the Tower?” Stephen asks when they break apart and the Cloak returns, albeit rather reluctantly, to its master’s shoulders. Tony pauses; ever since the whole fiasco with Wanda he’s been, to put it lightly, wary of that sort of thing. But somehow the fact that it’s Stephen doing it is making it seem at least tolerable. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“No, I’ll take it. Saves me the trouble.” Stephen looks mildly surprised at his response, having obviously expected Tony to decline.

“You sure?” Tony nods.

“‘Cause it’s you. I trust you.” Stephen’s grin is blinding as he unhooks the sling ring from his belt and draws a sweeping circle at the foot of the stairs, revealing Tony’s lab on the other side.

“I’ll see you tonight, Tony,” he says, and Tony can’t help but kiss him again, firm but chaste, before he dashes down the stairs and through the portal, waving over his shoulder. To his own mild shock, it feels perfectly natural. The portal spirals shut behind him, leaving a shower of orange sparks to fall to the floor, and when he turns around he finds himself face to face with his best friend.

“Tones,” Rhodey says. “Did I just see you use a portal without even flinching? And more importantly, did I just see you making out with Stephen Strange?” Tony can’t keep the dopey smile off his face as he replies.

“Yes, you did, and even though I wouldn’t exactly term that ‘making out,’ hey, if that helps you sleep at night, by all means.” Rhodey glares halfheartedly at him.

“Well, you look happy, anyway, so I’m happy for you. Also, fuck you, because you just lost me twenty bucks. I bet Pepper that you two would kiss in the middle of a mission. She said at some ungodly hour at night, and according to FRIDAY you left for the Sanctum at two in the morning.” Tony’s face falls in mid-snicker at Rhodey’s complaining as he recalls why he’d ended up at the Sanctum in the first place.

“By the way, the nightmares are back,” he informs him. Rhodey grimaces in sympathy and pulls Tony into a hug. 

“I’m sorry. What’s it, the snap?” Tony nods. “If you need anything, I’ll be here.” 

“I’ll live. It isn’t like it’s anything new. Anyway, I actually slept last night too, so I am not, contrary to popular belief, running entirely on caffeine.” 

“Yeah, about that. You showed up at Strange’s house at two in the morning? Listen, Tones, you might have the highest IQ this side of the Atlantic, but that was a pretty stupid move. Or, could’ve been. You’re probably lucky you’re not freezing your ass off in Antarctica.”

“Nah, he was awake too,” Tony replies. And then he remembers, as seems to be the pattern this morning, why.  _ Shit.  _ “Wait, wait, no, fuck, I’ve fucked up.” Rhodey sighs, his  _ not again, Stark _ look fixed firmly on his face.

“What’d you do?” Tony groans and shuts his eyes, slumping into the chair sitting conveniently behind him. How could he have forgotten?

“He was awake ‘cause it was pretty obvious that he was having nightmares too, and I was meaning to ask him about that ‘cause I’d never seen him so freaked out but then I accidentally brought up some of the shit that happened on Titan and then afterwards, that’s what my dream was about, and then I totally forgot to ask this morning.” He drops his head into his hands and then peeks out at Rhodey from between his fingers. “God, I feel like an asshole. I vented at him and I never gave him the chance to vent back, what if he thinks I don’t care? Rhodey, help, I do care, I’m just talkative and forgetful and—”

“Tony, stop,” Rhodey says. “If he wants to talk about it he will, and if you really, really can’t stand it you can even  _ ask _ him about it. You’re a genius, look up  _ communication _ . And I can always kick his ass for you if things get shitty. Even though I’ve got a feeling they won’t. He looked as smitten with you as you did with him; personally, it was disgusting and I don’t want it within ten feet of me.” 

“What would I do without you, Rhodey?” Tony says, and he means it, because he can feel his anxiety receding by the minute. It’s helped along by the fact that he knows he’s going to see Stephen later, which means that he can make up for it, well, probably actually making out with him, but also at least asking him if he wants to talk about it. “Also, you’re just jealous because I’ve got someone hot kissing me and you don’t.” 

“Okay, Mr. Fly-To-My-Crush’s-House-At-Two-In-The-Morning, it isn’t my fault that your wizard is just as insane as you are. Oh, god, now there’s two of you to worry about.”

“Should I be interpreting that as you giving your blessing, cause I’d like you to know that I totally am.” Rhodey’s swearing is drowned out by Tony laughing.

_ I think I can get used to this _ , he thinks as he follows Rhodey out of the lab, already thinking about his kind-of-date with Stephen later. 

“Hey, Rhodey, twenty bucks says you don’t get laid for another six months,” he teases. Rhodey flips him off without looking back.

“Fuck off, Tones. Losing enough money as it is,” he mutters, the sound filtering back to Tony as he increases his pace down the hallway. Tony laughs.

“Yeah, I can’t believe you guys were actually putting down bets, I didn’t even have a plan until I was halfway there.” Rhodey stops short and spins around to look at him.

“Seriously?” Tony nods. Rhodey stares for another moment before whipping back around, muttering undoubtedly unflattering things under his breath.

Tony spends the rest of the day pacing around the compound like a caged tiger. He makes a cursory attempt at cleaning the lab before he happens upon an old suit mod that he’d written on the back of a receipt and then apparently lost in the mess that tends to consume the place approximately 0.2 seconds after he cleans, and soon enough he’s elbows-deep in lines of code trying to figure out how to marry the old design with his new tech. Soon enough, though, the initial rush of inspiration peters out to the point that it feels like there’s something blocking up all the ideas in his brain and he can’t seem to get any of them to come out. 

After an hour of sitting there staring fruitlessly at the screens, writing and immediately deleting segments, he finally gives up, and then immediately runs into the problem that pretty much everything he does is somehow related to his tech and he has no idea what to do with himself if he isn’t working. Cleaning’s making him anxious too, because there’s so much stuff and nowhere to put it and he’s afraid he isn’t going to be able to find anything if he puts it away, so he gives up on that too and hopes Stephen isn’t going to think he’s a slob when he sees the mess.

He goes upstairs to bother Pepper, but her office door is locked and Happy informs him that she’s in a meeting. He runs back down to the lab in a huff and promptly flies up to her window in the suit to wave at her, but she barely looks up from the videoconference she’s on and honestly, he needs new friends. 

Right around when Tony starts feeling like he’s going to die of boredom, Peter shows up for help with something he’s working out with his latest web formula, because he’s managed to double the strength of it but in the process somehow turned it green and kind of slippery. Tony spends a couple hours doing that while Peter tries for the thousandth time to get him to understand memes — he still doesn’t, but whatever. At some point during their session Peter manages to weasel out that he may or may not be kind-of-dating Stephen, and by the way he lights up it’s like Tony’s told him Christmas has come early. He doesn’t think he’s been  _ that _ obvious — or that Peter had any reason to be that invested in his love life — but Peter looks so elated that he elects not to say anything. 

Peter leaves about an hour before Stephen’s meant to arrive, and five minutes later Tony realizes that he has nothing to wear, and promptly panics and considers commissioning a whole new outfit just for the occasion. And then he reminds himself that he isn’t going  _ out _ , he’s just hanging out in his own lab and hoping DUM-E doesn’t douse anyone on accident. Except he’s doing it with Stephen and he really, really wants Stephen to like him and he is turning into a smitten mess much faster than he’d really like. He doesn’t think he’s let anyone he’s dated into his lab since Pepper and she’d usually been trying to drag him out of it because he hadn’t slept in three days. His lab is his castle, his lab is his safe space, and he doesn’t let people into his safe space. Hell, he practically lives there when it gets too bad to be anywhere else, drowning out the world with AC/DC and his latest project. 

And now here he is, letting Stephen down there before he’s even taken him out to dinner, and it feels miles more intimate than any upscale restaurant Tony could ever choose, even if he buys out the whole place just for them.  _ You’re falling fast, Stark _ , says a little nagging voice in the back of his head, and part of him knows that that voice has been there ever since Stephen looked at him, bleeding out on Titan, and then looked at the giant genocidal grape about to erase him from existence, and somehow chose Tony over half the universe. He chooses not to dwell on that one, though, at least not until he has something to  _ wear _ on this date.

Tony takes the elevator up to the penthouse, fingers tapping a nervous pattern across his thigh until the doors slide open. He waves a distracted greeting at the sound of FRIDAY’s voice as he pulls the doors of his closet open all the way and starts flipping through hangers. Every now and then, he pulls out a shirt to hold it up in front of his body before swearing and flinging it into the rapidly growing pile by his feet. He spends a while debating with himself over whether a suit is too formal, just because half of his closet is composed of suits and also he has it on reasonable authority that he looks  _ hot _ in a suit. Eventually, though, he remembers, again, that they’re going to be in his  _ own lab _ and he’s just going to be horribly overdressed if he shows up in black tie. Anyway, he’s already planning to take Stephen somewhere fancy, and he’ll have plenty enough time to show him exactly how good he looks dressed up. He’s not going to go in a ratty sweatshirt, though, he’s got a reputation to maintain, and now he’s right back where he started. 

He’s scraping the back of his closet by the time he decides on a relatively simple grey button-down, and after a moment of thought tosses a sweater over it; that look’s never failed him before and it sure as hell isn’t going to start now. He glances at the time as he pulls the sweater over his head, only to find that Stephen’s meant to be there in ten minutes and he still hasn’t fixed his  _ hair _ or, you know, gotten a pair of pants. Fortunately — or unfortunately, because he’s going to need to clean it up, stat — most of his jeans are already on the floor, making that part a lot easier. Of course, he changes them twice as he attempts to decide which pair makes his ass look better, but hey, he’s got to show off his assets — and if he laughs a little at that pun, well, no one needs to know. 

Somehow, Tony makes it down to the ground floor with two minutes to spare, gelling his hair up using the wall of the elevator as a mirror, and he’s fidgeting with the bottom button on his shirt when a portal opens in front of him and Stephen steps through, and Jesus Christ, if he looks this good in casual clothes, Tony’s weak heart is not going to survive seeing him in a suit.

“Hi,” Tony says, stepping forward to press a quick kiss against the corner of Stephen’s mouth and unabashedly looking him up and down. 

“Like what you see?” Stephen says with a wink. Tony winks right back.

“Well, it’s much better than your frumpy old wizard pajamas, to say the least. Although, it seems I should be asking  _ you _ the same question,” he smirks as he notices Stephen checking him out.

“It’d be quite a waste of a view if I didn’t look at it,” and okay that was  _ smooth _ , and who is Tony to turn down an invitation like that? Stephen’s eyes flick to his lips, and Tony takes a step forward at the same time. Stephen meets him halfway in a soft kiss that very quickly devolves into Tony standing on his toes with his arms around Stephen’s neck and his tongue in his mouth.

Stephen pulls away first, breathing hard, and just as Tony’s started to worry he might be taking it too fast he leans back in for a shorter kiss.

“It’s nice to see you, Tony,” he says, and Tony can only laugh breathlessly.

“It’s nice to see you, too, Stephen,” Tony replies, and despite how very long he’d spent freaking out about this date everything had somehow melted away the second Stephen had stepped through that portal.

“Shall we?” he says, and offers Stephen his arm. Stephen takes it, and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im on tumblr [@mariahiill](https://mariahiill.tumblr.com)  
> i would die for comments and kudos <3

**Author's Note:**

> i live for comments and kudos :3
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](https://tconystark.tumblr.com), please come scream at me about ironstrange/iw/marvel/anything really


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